


esprit de corps

by spookykingdomstarlight



Series: quintessence [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: He looked out onto the people around him, now so earnest in their grimness. Most of them had never been through this before. Some had, of course, and they appeared more tired than shocked, quietly upset, but careful in their expression of it. Tightness had settled around so many eyes. Despair.Cassian hated that he’d had to put it there, but he and Jyn were the ones who’d stumbled across the whispers first. It only seemed right that they would be the ones to spread the news.This was the job they’d burdened themselves with.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [Themed Prompt Table challenge](http://monthlysupergo.dreamwidth.org/932.html) going on over at the [Monthly Challenge! Super Go! community](http://monthlysupergo.dreamwidth.org) on Dreamwidth. This piece is for the prompt: spirit.

It didn’t matter how different a war room might look, they were all the same at the end of the day. The differences in their trappings were superficial, cosmetic; they barely registered. And Cassian hated stepping into this one as much as he’d hated stepping into Yavin’s so many years ago now. But though it was distasteful to him, step into it he did, a bright, painfully young woman turning toward him and falling into line with him as he passed, so somber with the need to be taken seriously. He remembered being that young and clamoring that hard for respect. “General Andor,” she said, and it only took him a moment to place that voice. “Welcome to D’Qar.”

“Commander Sella,” he answered, warm. “It’s good to put a face to the name. But I don’t believe I’ve accepted any titles here. I’m no general.” He might still have been a rebel at heart—or, he supposed, a Resistance fighter—but he and Jyn had stepped out of the chain of command a long time ago. He wasn’t willing to come back to that.

Her lip quirked in brief acknowledgment, but whatever she might had said in response was subsumed immediately by the sound of clapping. Clapping, of all the nonsensical things. Force, when he looked around most of them were as young or younger than Sella. And bright, too, with smiles of relief on their faces as they looked at him. Unsure what to do, his face heating, he ducked his head and waved in acknowledgment, hunching as he strode forward even more quickly than he intended, an ache building in his knee with every step.

Old age catching up to him or one of his various injuries acting up? He wasn’t sure. It was both probably.

“All right, that’s enough,” Leia called from the center of the crowd, neither young nor bright, but more alive than all the rest of them put together anyway. And somehow comforting despite the short and curt manner with which she spoke. A man with black curls stood at her side, his orange flight suit a sharp, divisive contrast to the greens and browns and beiges of most of the uniforms around him. Jyn, taller than Leia, but not by much, was next to both of them, a wry, almost terrified grin on her mouth. Whether she wanted him to save her or she thought she could maybe save him, Cassian couldn’t say. “We’re all very glad you could make it.”

Cassian’s brow arched. “Did you order them to do that, General?” he asked, loud enough for everyone to hear—and to laugh at. He looked at Jyn and, for her alone, said, “Please tell me they did that to you, too,” as a fresh wave of heat suffused his cheeks, the start of what he was sure would be an unconscionable blush. The curly-haired man overheard them and grinned, and opened his palms. _What can you do,_ he seemed to suggest.

Jyn shrugged. “I’m trying to forget.”

He slipped his hand into the cargo pocket of her trousers, her hip and thigh warm through the fabric. It was maybe not the most professional of gestures, but they were here in no official capacity and it had been many years since they’d let propriety and decorum get between them. “Why did we agree to this again?”

“We didn’t,” Jyn answered, hushed. “We were ordered here, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.” It had been a friendly order, phrased as a request, too, but no one really denied General Organa when she chose to summon you, not even Jyn and Cassian for all of their claims about the freedom to move about the galaxy and help in whatever way they pleased. For reasons that Cassian chose to leave unexplored, she had summoned them here now.

By now, they’d all heard tales of the mysterious First Order, though Cassian and Jyn had been some of the first. But though Leia had clearly gathered people to her cause, but she didn’t have heroes. Han wasn’t here, nor was her brother. General Calrissian had found a niche similar to theirs, helping the Resistance efforts in his own way.

Reluctant former heroes would have to do, Cassian supposed. And not even really heroes as far as he was concerned. Scared, hopeless people with nothing to lose except themselves, maybe. But not heroes. Not people who deserved applause.

They worked in the shadows, he and Jyn did. They weren’t Jedi or royalty or scoundrels-turned-good. Well, maybe Jyn was the very latter, but most people didn’t know that about her and both she and he liked it that way.

“I believe Mr. Andor and Ms. Erso have a report they’d like to share with us,” Leia said, bringing Cassian back to the present and reminding him that he actually served a purpose here. Even if it was not the one she’d sold him on. She’d never said, for example, that he was to rally the troops, though something of that must have been her intent now that he thought about it. Why she’d thought Cassian or Jyn capable of providing that rallying point remained a mystery to him.

“Do you want me to do it?” Jyn asked, concern in her eyes as Cassian slipped his hand free from her pocket. She reached briefly for that hand and clasped it in her own.

“No, I don’t mind.” Cassian cleared his throat, quiet, coughing into his shoulder as discreetly as he could. Stepping forward, he nodded at Leia. “We’ve received intelligence…”

The brief itself was nothing, easily memorized, so much like history repeating itself that it didn’t require close scrutiny to get correct. A Death Star. Again. Bigger, with better fortifications, and, as far as anyone could tell, enough firepower to destroy an entire system. It wasn’t just a planet killer, no. And as his tongue skated over the words, he saw the way hope gave way to fear and demoralization and anger. Heads bowed; mouths took in gasped, sharp breaths of air; a few palms stifled cries. He didn’t bother projecting the hazy, shimmering holosnaps they’d bought from unscrupulous dealers, too blurry to make the base out as anything more than a bogey from the past reimagined. Those pictures wouldn’t make it any easier.

They would, he imagined, no longer wish to clap for him.

This, this was far more in line with what Cassian had expected upon coming here. It made him glad that Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut were busy with the reconstruction projects going on above Jedha and that K-2 had stayed back to pester C-3PO about his network of droid spies.

He looked out onto the people around him, now so earnest in their grimness. Most of them had never been through this before. Some had, of course, and they appeared more tired than shocked, quietly upset, but careful in their expression of it. Tightness had settled around so many eyes. Despair.

Cassian hated that he’d had to put it there, but he and Jyn were the ones who’d stumbled across the whispers first. It only seemed right that they would be the ones to spread the news.

This was the job they’d burdened themselves with.

“…but we’ve defeated this before. Twice,” he said, unsure why when he’d never been the man to inspire, not until there were blasters in hand and a battle on the horizon. The pretty words spoken from inside the eye of the storm, those didn’t belong to him. They belonged to people like Leia or Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, may he continue to rest in peace despite this evil, so like the evil he fought. Even Jyn was better than him at this and that was… not saying very much given her track record.

She was too much a leader on the battlefield, too, to be wholly comforting when there was no immediate danger.

“The bigger the weapon,” he continued, clasping his hands behind his back to keep anyone from seeing the way his hands shook, “the bigger the weakness. And we will find it. The least wise woman I know once said that one man with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose could win the day. She learned those words from a man who’d sacrificed everything he was and still fought until the very end against the yoke the Empire threw around the galaxy’s neck. But we have more than a sharp stick at our disposal and we’ve all built something worth protecting and the First Order doesn’t know it yet, but those two things will win us more than the day.”

He never raised his voice, not once, as he spoke, but once he was done, his outburst still rang in his ears. And he wasn’t even sure he believed what he said. He remembered Endor. They, to the last of them, had thought it was done, that they could go home or make a home or find one. And then Jakku happened and they’d thought they were done then, too. And for a little while, perhaps, they had been. Long enough that even Cassian had believed maybe he could trust the calm, that his retirement hadn’t just been a vain hope for lasting peace.

Thirty years wasn’t a good enough run. That wasn’t even a lifetime.

It didn’t matter whether he believed or not.

“The Empire never stopped,” he finished. “We can’t either.”

Again, nobody clapped. And Cassian didn’t expect them to, but when he looked around this time, he saw determination spark in each pair of eyes his own maintained even the slightest bit of contact with. No one looked away. It was the kind of quiet determination that saw people through the bad moments and the good. It was a steady determination. It was the kind of determination that would see them through everything the First Order might throw at them.

Perhaps Leia had been right to send for them. As much as her people needed to see them, maybe they—or Cassian, at least, he wouldn’t speak for Jyn—had needed to see these people, too. Determination was still a force in the galaxy and they had that in staves.

He could see it in everyone’s eyes. They wouldn’t stop.

And neither would he.


End file.
